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gridloreLast night, Kirsten and I ooh'ed and aah'ed over a PBS show about pandas. Lots over overly-cute baby pandas being born in a captive breeding program. Very heart warming stuff.
But...
Why can't we admit that the Panda is basically extinct? Even without habitat loss, the bloody things are doomed! They give birth to twins, but for some reason regularly reject one cub. This cutes the viable population each generation from the start, and the mortality rate before breeding is amazing. They are overly specialized in feeding, dependent on a single food source. They even have problems reproducing in the wild.. a scent recognition system has gotten so off whack that many pandas will refuse mating with anything but blood relatives! This is not good for genetic diversity.
There are battles we can win, and battles that we will loose no matter what we do. Pandas are the latter.
Give it up, and allow them the dignity of extinction.
But...
Why can't we admit that the Panda is basically extinct? Even without habitat loss, the bloody things are doomed! They give birth to twins, but for some reason regularly reject one cub. This cutes the viable population each generation from the start, and the mortality rate before breeding is amazing. They are overly specialized in feeding, dependent on a single food source. They even have problems reproducing in the wild.. a scent recognition system has gotten so off whack that many pandas will refuse mating with anything but blood relatives! This is not good for genetic diversity.
There are battles we can win, and battles that we will loose no matter what we do. Pandas are the latter.
Give it up, and allow them the dignity of extinction.
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Date: 2 Mar 2003 10:59 (UTC)I have to agree with you, actually--in terms of resources allocated to result produced, working on the panda is highly problematic. The only problem apart from the fact that conservationists are committed to the preservation of the panda is that if we give up on the panda, it could have a spillover effect onto other projects to preserve endangered species, which are often less prolific than pandas (California condors, frex).